I didn't go into Kolkata this "weekend". Jen, one of the volunteers, had an appendicitis (idk how to spell that) and she came back to the flat yesterday. She is doing pretty well, considering the circumstances. But she's in alot of pain, I think. She is being really stoic about it.
Anyway, pretty much my whole day yesterday was devoted to getting her home. It was way more trouble than necessary, because all sorts of small problems kept arising. But in the end it all worked out.
Today Bobby went to Dum Dum with Sabine, the new volunteer from Germany. So Lauren, Nienke and I were on our own at school. Bobby had obviously threatened the students and told them to be good, because they were on their best behavior. With Bobby gone, we decided to spice things up, and we played charades. They weren't allowed to speak in Bengali, only English. To our immense disappointment, the kids didn't rise to the occassion. They really have almost no creativity. One of them would go up to act something out (we had things like Maura Auntie, a sad person, a tiger, and Gandhiji written on paper that they pulled from a bag) and they would just say "no, Auntie." They didn't even try. So eventually we gave up and went back to doing regular class.
I started pre-algebra with the advanced group, and they did pretty well. They all tried and paid attention, so I was happy. We did things like 4ab + 3a - 2b - 3ab -2a + 4b.
On Saturday I'm going to Thailand, so I'm really excited.

~m